Funders are finally noticing the flashing red lights of growing burnout across the nonprofit sector. And there's a growing trickle of philanthropic response. But grantmakers are missing the fundamental connections between their own funding practices, how grantees can...
Blog
The CEP blog aims to offer a range of perspectives, experiences, and opinions related to effective philanthropic practice. We welcome submissions that address crucial issues facing individual and institutional donors and are not self-promotional in nature. The views expressed in these posts are not necessarily CEP’s own.
Foundations Are Concerned About Nonprofit Staff Burnout, Too
“We are in what feels like daily crisis mode. Our staff is small and overtaxed. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to run the organization, and we haven’t had the luxury of much down time.” The sentiment above was shared by a respondent to a CEP survey of nonprofit...
This Year’s State of Nonprofits Highlights Mounting Concern About Burnout
Burnout is top of mind for nonprofit leaders in 2024, despite relative consistency in nonprofit organizations’ finances and relationships with funders. This is one of the key insights in a new CEP report, State of Nonprofits 2024: What Funders Need to Know, released...
Going it Together: Three Foundations, One Office
[vc_row el_class="sixtysix-thirtythree"][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]It’s not often an executive director can say, “Projections for 2024 occupancy-related costs will decrease by approximately 40%.” Especially when working from a newly occupied, 3,000 square...
Prioritizing Grants Management: An Unsung Key to Effective Funding
Often, when I hear talk about funders and the ways they can achieve impact, the conversations tend to revolve around the same few groups: program staff, senior leadership, and boards. No doubt, these roles are essential for driving impact in philanthropy. But, in my...
Closing the Feedback Loop with Grantees: A Conversation with the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation
One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from grantmakers after they complete a Grantee Perception Report (GPR) with CEP is, “How would you recommend sharing these findings back to our grantees?” While we encourage all funders to, at the minimum, thank...
How Listening Helped One Funder Set Strategic Direction
[vc_row el_class="sixtysix-thirtythree"][vc_column width="2/3"][vc_column_text]In my many years working with funders at the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), one of the most common phrases that comes up in discussions of results is “we’re different” — and there...
What the Music of Taylor Swift Can Teach Us About Great Philanthropy
Great music is more than the sum of its parts. A certain combination of notes, chords, and lyrics may create an exquisite gem of a song — or a barnburner of a jam — but what’s required to elevate music to the level of greatness is something else: an artist’s specific...
Four Data-Driven Principles for Better Board Performance
“CEO oversight? Evaluation? Strategy? No, we don’t do that. But if you want a fundraising gala, I’m your guy!” That’s how a colleague once heard another board chair describe his own role, and the role of the board he led. That remark is not representative of most...
Your Questions About Demographic Data Collection, Answered
In recent years, CEP’s analysis of demographic data from its Grantee Perception Report and research datasets found that both Native American nonprofit leaders and Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) nonprofit leaders were having less positive experiences with...
Silently Shrinking Grants: Is Inflation Reducing the Value of Your Grant?
In philanthropy, we have been talking a lot about the crucial need for funders to provide more multiyear, general operating support. That’s important, and I also think we need to talk more about the size of grants. Why? At least from what I can see in CEP’s Grantee...
Can Endowment Funding Advance Racial Justice and Equity?
Advancing racial equity and wellbeing is hard work, especially for on-the-ground organizations that are leading the work. Endowment grantmaking is a tool that foundations can use to ensure that these organizations not only survive but thrive. For us at the Robert Wood...
Going Beyond Innovating: Reimagining the Program Officer Role
This is the fourth and final in a series of posts contributed by the Feedback Incentives Learning Group, a group of funders convened by Feedback Labs that are dedicated to encouraging peer funders to listen to the people most harmed by the systems and...
Endowing Nonprofits — One Powerful Way to Advance Equity
Endowments can be transformative for nonprofits, especially those representing traditionally underserved populations and working to close gaps, and deserve a closer look as an effective strategy for funders to advance equity. Recent CEP research shows that...
The Abbott Approach: Innovating in the Program Officer Role
This is the third in a series of posts contributed by the Feedback Incentives Learning Group, a group of funders convened by Feedback Labs that are dedicated to encouraging peer funders to listen to the people most harmed by the systems and structures...
Revisiting 7 Big Questions for Big Philanthropy: Will A Focus on Racial Equity Be Sustained?
This is second in a series of posts in which I revisit some of the big questions for philanthropy discussed in a post published in the fall of 2022. I hear more talk about the state of philanthropy’s commitment to racial equity than perhaps any other issue when I...
What Does It Mean for Funders to Listen Well?
This is the second in a series of posts contributed by the Feedback Incentives Learning Group, a group of funders convened by Feedback Labs that are dedicated to encouraging peer funders to listen to the people most harmed by the systems and...
Let’s Build Assets for Racial Equity
As a Black foundation leader, shifting resources and power to organizations of color is not just personal: it’s strategic. For decades, these grassroots organizations have been sustaining democracy, advancing racial equity through advocacy and organizing. Despite...
Endowments are Great — But Sustainability and Autonomy are the Greater Good
As a foundation leader and fan of nonprofit endowments, I wasn’t surprised to read CEP’s recent findings that less than a third of foundations grant to endowments. The CEP report, an examination of the prevalence of and approach to endowment funding,...
Foundation Approaches to Endowments and Equity
As a concept, endowments — defined as funds to be kept permanently and invested to provide sustained support — have existed for more than a thousand years. Supporters of endowments note that they can present an opportunity to shift power and promote nonprofit...